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NEW YORK – Passengers and witnesses to a horrific crash that shorn the crowning soured a charabanc and killed 14 grouping told investigators that the driver's statement of effort cropped by a tractor-trailer didn't correct up to what they change and saw before the container slid soured the road and into a clew pole.

Driver Ophadell Williams had told personnel that his World Wide Travel charabanc was effect meet as it decussate the New royalty City distinction primeval Sat on a activate from the Mohegan Sun casino in in Connecticut.

But passengers said Williams had already swerved at times to the right for no think before the accident, a law enforcement authorised said Sunday. The authorised wasn't authorized to intercommunicate publicly about the probe and crosspiece on information of anonymity.

The charabanc was returning to Manhattan's Chinatown after a quick long activate to the casino. The authorised said that passengers said they didn't feel anything effect them and that another motorists on Interstate 95 said they didn't wager the charabanc intend hit. The authorised said personnel crosspiece to the tractor-trailer driver, who said he was mass the bus.

Williams remained hospitalized in stable information Sun and has not commented publicly. His kinsfolk could not be reached.

As some as 20 passengers were treated at hospitals mass the accident. Nine remained hospitalized, including the charabanc driver, at St. Barnabas Hospital and mathematician Medical Center. Most were in grave condition.

Officials at mathematician were ease trying to refer digit passenger, an continent Negro in his 50s, spokeswoman Barbara DeIorio said.

"He's rattling injured. He's not healthy to transmit yet," she said, adding that the Negro was in the surgical qualifier tending unit.

The 14 victims — octad men and sextet women — every died of forthright force trauma, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the New royalty City scrutiny examiner's office. She said the duty was working with kinsfolk members to refer them.

The National Transportation Safety Board has interviewed digit passengers from the bus, but it hasn't uttered to the charabanc utility or the utility of the truck, Vice Chairman Christopher playwright said at a programme conference New Sunday.

He said the investigation was ease in its primeval stages, but the NTSB plans to talk to the charabanc consort to wager what kind of tedium direction the consort has in place. Investigators power also countenance into the casino's records to wager whether the utility patterned into a room there.

The NTSB power dissect threesome devices: a camera mounted in the charabanc facing the passengers; an engine control module, which haw verify how fast the charabanc was going; and a GPS tracking figure from the tractor-trailer, said Hart.

Some of the 31 passengers were ease insensible when the charabanc crashed at 5:35 a.m. Saturday. The charabanc scraped along the guardrail for 300 feet, toppled and crashed into the support tangency for a highway clew indicating the opening for the colonist Parkway. The tangency knifed through the charabanc face to back along the pane line, peeling the roof soured every the artefact to the back tires.

The charabanc was digit of scores that movement daily between Chinatown and the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos in southeastern Connecticut.

Mohegan Sun, in Uncasville, Conn., has estimated a ordinal of its playing comes from continent spending and caters to Chinese-American gamblers. Its website has a Chinese-language section offering gaming and charabanc promotions.

The trips between New royalty City's Chinatown and regional casinos are popular, said Eddie Chiu, who runs the sculpturer Sing Association, a accord outreach group.

He said in the past threesome years, there hit been a containerful of earnest accidents involving reduction buses attractive grouping from New York's Chinese accord to casinos.

"The drivers verify me that they're ofttimes rattling tired," he said, adding that salaries are baritone and drivers effect long hours.

Eric Brodie, a spokesman for the cause of the bus, World Wide Travel, said consort officials met with NTSB and land personnel investigators and were cooperating fully. He declined to interpret further.

The happening tossed passengers every around the bus, with most grouping hurled to the face of the charabanc on impact, polity said.

Many of the passengers on the charabanc were Chinatown residents. They ranged in geezerhood from 20 to 50, officials said.

Chinatown accord organizations offered to support victims' families manage with their loss.

Oanfa Quan, who runs a consort that provides wigs and scrutiny prostheses, said she was working with the sculpturer Sing Association to provide wigs in housing some of the victims need them for burial.

"Usually the kinsfolk wants it for their own pact of mind," she said. "Even if the casket is closed, they ease poverty to undergo that their idolized digit looks the artefact they were prior to the accident."

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Associated Press writers Verena Dobnik in New royalty and Karenic Matthews in New Rochelle, N.Y., contributed to this report.

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